Here's the story of another innocent killed in a drug investigation, via Drug WarRant:
Warren Beaulah was driving the SUV in which 39-year-old Kenneth Walker was riding on Interstate 185 at around 9 o'clock Wednesday night. According to Beaulah, he and his passengers were doing nothing wrong when he observed blue lights in the rear view mirror.
He pulled over to the side of the road and was in the process of putting the car in park when, he says, a law enforcement officer pulled open his door and dragged him from the vehicle [...]
Five to ten seconds later, Beaulah says he heard a single gunshot. At the time the shot was fired, he says, there was "lots of screaming and yelling."
[...]
The Muscogee County Sheriff's Department has confirmed that Walker was unarmed at the time of the incident and blames the fatal incident on faulty information from an informant in a drug case.
As I've noted before, drug witnesses are notoriously unreliable, sometimes fingering completely innocent people to avoid being prosecuted themselves. Naturally, it's hard to avoid tragedies like this given the way drug investigations are conducted.
When you read Drug WarRant's story be sure to scroll down for the link to Jesse Ventura's debate with a representative of the ONDCP. Guess who wins that argument?
Added: I should update a feature of this blog, which is an informal tally of this sort of incident. So far my Drug War Bystander Casualty Count stands at twenty dead, four wounded.
I think the wounded number is so low because it takes a fatality to make the news.
Posted by Walter at December 16, 2003 08:27 AM